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Some residents of Mill Valley's Redwoods Retirement Center feel President Bush is leading the country into war and they demonstrated yesterday - using canes, walkers and wheelchairs - to let him know they want no part of it.The nursing home residents are already planning their next protest, and this time, the nursing home is promising more support."He doesn't tell us what's going on," said Nora Boskoff, 84, organizer of a curbside demonstration yesterday outside the nursing home on Camino Alto. "It's becoming like (Soviet) Russia or (Nazi) Germany."
Dozens of protesters attended the demonstration, many using canes, walkers and wheelchairs as they stood by the roadside waving signs and singing protest songs.
Last week, Ms. Boskoff decided the time had come to start the nursing home's first peace group and anti-war demonstration. Little did she know that more than 80 other residents would be there to support her.
Bea Lott, program coordinator at the nursing home, said only about three or four of the residents attended the large San Francisco anti-war rally last month because it required so much standing. The nursing home doesn't necessarily support the anti-war position but she said the residents have a right to speak their minds and it is her job to help them accomplish that. "We'll have coffee, hot chocolate and American flags next time," she said, referring to another demonstration scheduled for 4 p.m. Friday. "Next time it will be more colorful."Cars driving by honked their support for the protesting seniors. The oldest one was 95 year old Mutsu Muneno.
Burrowed inside a winter coat, gloves and a wool hat, she chanted "No War," while holding up one end of a banner that spelled out PEACE. She said Bush needs to do a better job of convincing the public before taking such drastic measures with America's troops. "I don't support any of this," she said. "It winds up killing the young."Link via Common Dreams.
Aspen, Colorado held a successful peace rally this Saturday. Numbers in attendance vary, but the organizers, Roaring Forke Peace Coaltition ran out of 1,000 ski bibs, that said "Make snow, not war." A group from Telluride also attended and brought 200 more which also were distributed among the crowd.
The keynote speaker was the good Doctor Hunter S. Thompson, described in the article as "mostly coherent" at the time of his 5 pm address. He spoke about "the pitfalls of war and the evils of an unchecked government."
The protesters then joined together for a peace march down Main Street.
The Coalition meets every Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the Roaring Fork High School(Carbondale) in the Library. More events are planned.
Massive protests are planned for New York City and elsewhere February 15. United for Peace has all the details.
Join United for Peace & Justice for massive anti-war protests in New York City on Feb. 15 and San Francisco on Feb. 16. These demonstrations are part of a world-wide day of opposition to war against Iraq. From Bangkok to San Juan, from Johannesburg to Rome, the people of the world will speak out in what the London Daily Mirror says may be "the largest ever mobilization against war."
Doug McGill's rational, thoughtful essay, A Global Citizen Thinks About War :
"If the war happens it will be tragic and God-damned, because innocents will surely die. But if it happens, its explicit goal should be not simply the eradication of Saddam as a potential nuclear threat, which is spurious because we all understand that Saddam is deterrable, as he has been for thirty years. Rather, it should be done for the express purpose of the liberation of the people of Iraq; and it should be done without gloating or breast-beating; and only after longer deliberation and with a genuine commitment to long-term support of liberal democracy in the Middle East."
This is America's War, one in which our president feels no guilt or cynicism about invoking the heartrending images of September 11th, an event that recast his presidency from the expansion of fundamentalist conservative ideology in our nation to a philosophy of American expansion into the middle east.... The administration’s spin is that Iraqis and the Middle East will welcome America’s expansion. But is it moral for America to expand via military means? The history of our country is intertwined with westward expansion, and while such expansion contributed to American superpower, the treatment of native Americans and African slaves in the course of this expansion was immoral at best – genocidal at its worst "Oliver's clearly given a lot of thought to the issue and he raises some valid points.
The St. Petersburg Times reports that in the last six months, the Pentagon has ordered 9,640 body bags.
"Right now, we're just replenishing supplies" in military warehouses, said Frank Johnson, a spokesman for the Defense Supply Center in Philadelphia. "It's not necessarily an indication of things to come." But two military suppliers said it is logical to assume that the government is anticipating battlefield casualties."
Here's something we didn't know: "The military shuns the term body bag, which gained widespread usage during the Vietnam War, when 58,000 American military personnel died. Instead, the military began calling them "human remains pouches" during the 1991 Persian Gulf war. They are made of vinyl and cost the government about $38 a pouch."
Forget the shameless politicization of an unprecedented terrorist attack. Forget that every informed opinion says that an attack will trigger reprisals here at home that we are not ready for. Forget the broken promises to firefighters and cops, forget the unnecessary, clumsy, and disruptive invasion of civil rights by the largest and most expensive government ever, forget the staggering arrogance and sobering ineptitude on the international stage. Wipe it all off the table and send it smashing to the floor. I don't care. Sit down across the now-empty table from me and tell me how on earth I can live with an administration that proposes to do this in my name--
Atrios and David Niewert today both discuss the right wing attempted revival of the possibility of a connection between the Oklahoma City Bombing and Iraq, based on this Frank J. Gaffney Jr. column in the Washington Times. Roger Ailes discusses it here.
The McVeigh defense team tried to explore this angle, although as everyone knows, McVeigh never veered from insisting there was no such connection. This brief filed with the court and available free here, lays out the possible connection uncovered up to that point in time, and what further materials the defense was seeking from the Govenrment so as to be able to complete it's investigation. For those who are interested in this issue, we highly recommend reading the brief. Here is a quote from the brief:The defense believes that there is credible evidence that a conspiracy to bomb federal property, very possibly the Murrah Building, is centered in Elohim City and the persons described which are associated with Elohim City, but that the technical expertise and possibly financial support came from a foreign country, most likely Iraq, but possibly Iran or another state in the Middle East. Dennis Mahon has admitted publicly to received money from Iraq, approximately once a month. D.E. 2191 at 11. According to Mahon, the money started arriving in 1991 after he began holding rallies protesting the Persian Gulf War. Id. Although the defense has no direct evidence linking Suspect I with Iraq, there is evidence indicating an indirect connection between Suspect I and Iraq through the militant Posse Comitatus group in Kansas.McVeigh's lead counsel, Stephen Jones, wrote an excellent book, "Others Unknown" detailing his suspicions. But the journalist-written book "American Terrorist" is equally compelling for the proposition that there was no such connection.
Also read David Niewert's Salon article on the controversy over the Government's insistance there was no John Doe II.
We also agree with David Niewert (and disagree with Roger) about Laurie Mylroie. As David points out, she "was for a long time a serious and well-respected Middle East analyst."
We haven't taken a definitive position on Iraq/middle eastern connection--but we have always believed, contrary to the Government's assertion, that there was a real John Doe II.
Here's a bump for one of our earlier posts on the issue:
The conspiracy theorists and right-wing websites are abuzz with the physical similarities between U.S. Citizen and military detainee Padilla and John Doe 2 who witnesses at the Ryder Truck rental facility in Junction City, KS identified back in 1995 as the companion of Timothy McVeigh. Witnesses also put John Doe 2 at the Dreamland motel (answering the door to accept a delivery of chinese food) and in Kingman, AZ. The Goverment lobbied hard for the proposition that John Doe 2 didn't exist--that the witnesses confused him with the associate of another truck renter the day before. Here are the pictures, the resemblence is quite striking, we think the matter needs to be investigated into a bit more. For starters, was Padilla in jail or out and about in April, 1995?
John Doe 2 (left) and Padilla (right)
"Your neglect of homeland defense funding has relegated 'the common defense' to yet another unfunded federal mandate for already cash-strapped cities cities that are still reeling from federal and state tax cuts that primarily benefit the wealthy," O'Malley said in the Democrats' weekly radio address.O'Malley, who was chosen by Senate minority leader Tom Daschle to give the Democratic rebuttal, said Baltimore, "like every city and town in America, has been left virtually defenseless by a federal government's failure to fund homeland defense."
Fire, police and health workers are the "front-line soldiers of our homeland defense," yet they are still "without the necessary equipment, training and communication systems that they need," he said.
The mayor urged Bush, as he prepares for next week's State of the Union address, not to make "teary tributes to our fallen police and fire heroes until you back up our living first responders with the tools and equipment they need to protect our nation."
"We have relied on a myth of homeland security - a myth written in rhetoric, inadequate resources and a new bureaucracy instead of relying on good, old-fashioned American ingenuity, might and muscle," Clinton said. "The truth is we are not prepared, we are not supporting our first responders, and our approach to securing our nation is haphazard at best," Clinton said. "Somewhere along the line, we lost our edge. We let our guard down."We're struck by the similarity between her comments and those of Gary Hart in his recent national security speech.
As recently as three months ago the Council on Foreign Relations task force that I co-chaired reported that we are woefully unprepared for, and still at risk of, future terrorist attacks. It is imprudent in the extreme to attack a nation in a region seething with hostile suicidal forces when we are vulnerable to their retaliation."Hillary promoted her "Provide for the Common Defense Act," "which she argues will force the federal government to give much-needed assistance to states and cities to protect citizens from terror threats. Her legislation calls for spending to develop anti-terror technologies, to create a task force to set minimum security standards, and to add federal security personnel in areas with large populations, including New York City."
Hart also spoke at the John Jay conference, but we haven't seen a news account of his speech yet. Like Atrios, we find the Republican criticism of her speech as "inviting" terrorist attacks to be baseless political rhetoric. We believe, like Clinton and Hart, this nation is not prepared for the consequences that a premptive war in Iraq will have here in the United States.
"Colin Powell sent strong signals Saturday that the United States would wait until after U.N. arms inspectors in Iraq submitted their report to the U.N. Security Council on Monday before making any decision on whether or not to lead a military coalition against Saddam Hussein."
Is this Bush's way of saving face in light of the paucity of international support for his war plan? In light of his declining approval ratings? In light of the growing opposition to the war by the American public?
We don't really care why he stalls--we just don't want to go to war.
Today in The Guardian, playwright Harold Pinter published a poem about America's intended military confrontation with Iraq. Instapundit says he agrees with blogger Chris Bertram that it is "scraping the bottom of the barrel."
Here's the poem:
Wednesday January 22, 2003
The Guardian
Here they go again,
The Yanks in their armoured parade
Chanting their ballads of joy
As they gallop across the big world
Praising America's God.
The gutters are clogged with the dead
The ones who couldn't join in
The others refusing to sing
The ones who are losing their voice
The ones who've forgotten the tune.
The riders have whips which cut.
Your head rolls onto the sand
Your head is a pool in the dirt
Your head is a stain in the dust
Your eyes have gone out and your nose
Sniffs only the pong of the dead
And all the dead air is alive
With the smell of America's God.
© Harold Pinter, January 2003
We'll admit, we didn't care much for the imagery in the poem. But we knew if anyone would defend the poem it would be TalkLeft's sister, who is the Bibliographical Editor of The Pinter Review and has published a book and otherwise written extensively about him. So we asked her what she thought. She sent us to a message board on Pinter where she had posted her detailed response earlier this morning. Her post is in response to a poster who had written (in response to yet another poster,)"Please feel free to hit that highway, both you and the idiot Pinter (what the hell is "sniff only the pong of the dead"). Those of us who are left will do what has to be done. I won't bother to argue with either of you, might as well argue with bricks.Here is her reply:
The word "pong" (British usage) means odor. The word appears in The Dumb Waiter (regarding the possibly unchanged bed sheets/linens) and relates to The Caretaker, where Aston complains about Davies' "stinking" the place out. I think it also is used in The Dwarfs (novel and play).I just saw the poem "God Bless America" today too. I think it is another one of Harold Pinter's powerful indictments of the hypocrisy of the current (and past) American "Administration."
It continues his critique of American political and military policies and practices exposed in his poems "Partners," "American Football," "Death," "After Lunch," and in other recent poetry, speeches, essays, and letters to newspapers, and in the dramatic works The New World Order, One for the Road, Mountain Language, Party Time, and Press Conference.
I think that "God Bless America" merits rereading from the perspective of those who are not citizens of the United States and who are urgently opposed to an America-led war on Iraq as well as from the perspective of those who are citizens of the United States and feel equally appalled by President Bush's drive toward "conducting" this war. The poem also addresses past actions by the United States and their dire consequences.
The "head" alluded to repeatedly in the last verse paragraph recalls the horrific image that Harold Pinter has described of the child's head literally blown off by an American bomb in the Serbian marketplace in Nis.
There is a documentary film about that war:"The documentary traces how crucial mistakes by the West]particularly Germany and the US[ led to the violent breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991, culminating in the devastating NATO bombing campaign of 1999. "Yugoslavia: The Avoidable War" traces the role of Western intelligence agencies in arming separatist groups in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. The film also examines media manipulation by the warring sides which helped shaped policies which prolonged the war."Will we in the years to come be lamenting "The War in Iraq: The Avoidable War?" Better to avoid it now than to be sorry about not having done so later--if we are all still here to be able to lament.In my own view, there is much more danger of a nuclear catastrophe resulting from engaging in a war on Iraq (which will polarize even more terrorist groups who may actually have access to nuclear and chemical weapons of mass destruction) than there is from a nuclear catastrophe resulting from dealing with Iraq's breaches of UN resolutions by other means. The US is not alone in the world now; it is part of the United Nations. I think that it needs to act accordingly. Otherwise, it may very well be alone--or not anywhere, as all of us will be too--no matter where we live--we'll all be dead, as Pinter's poem implies.
Susan Hollis Merritt, Ph.D.
Bibliographical Editor
The Pinter Review
[edited jan. 26]
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